Lisa: news of the nerdy

Like every self-respecting librarian, I have the comic Unshelved emailed to me every day. It's a little like Dilbert, in that its humor lies in the everyday follies and frustrations of the workplace--but the workplace is a library instead of a cube farm. I don't want you to think it's just a Dilbert knockoff that only appeals to librarians, though--Unshelved is hilarious in its own right. The authors also do something I love with their Sunday strip: the characters "talk about a book they've read in full-page full-color comic strips" that often mimic the style of the featured book. The authors call it the Book Club.

In a tenuous segue...

One day back in August, I was reading my daily installment of the Unshelved blog (for those of you hoping to up the nerd quotient of my entry, this blog was accompanied by a strip featuring Jayne hats), and came across a mention of the comic Wondermark, its author David Malki!, and his video Me vs. Comic-Con: Who's Better?. Since I hadn't yet encountered the time vortex, I gave my curiousity the reins and watched the 16-minute video. If you have the time, and you like things that are funny, I recommend clicking that link. I discovered an intense love for comic book nerds that I didn't even know I had. I shouldn't be surprised, I guess, given my penchant for nerds of all kinds, including...

Johnny Lee. Blake came home from work today and blew my mind with these Wii remote projects (which you have probably already seen if you read more tech blogs than I do). Using the technology of the Wii game system, Lee has created a head tracking system (making the 2-D TV screen appear 3-D), a low-cost interactive whiteboard or tablet display, and finger tracking (so you can control the computer by waving your hands in the air a la Tom Cruise in Minority Report). Something is wrong with the world if Johnny Lee isn't handed an amazing job or a lot of funding.

I can't even force a segue here, so I'm going to stop pretending this is a linear narrative. For those of you who live in Salt Lake, Ken Jennings (who I interviewed here!) is appearing thanks to the King's English bookshop on Thursday, January 31st to host a trivia challenge and sign his Trivia Almanac, which came out today.

Also announced today was the MacBook Air, a disgustingly thin and gorgeous new laptop perfect for people who are always on the go or who want a portable addition to their desktop system. Considering the jaw-dropping Macworld keynotes this year and last year with the iPhone, I'm hoping next year Steve Jobs will be announcing the introduction of the disposable paper cellphones you can buy from a vending machine like on (the absolutely terrible) Ultraviolet.